Crash: Lord’s Long Room uprising just the latest in history of cheap taunts aimed at visiting teams

The exclusive Marylebone Cricket Club is home to privilege and wealth, but there is also a nasty underbelly that was exposed on sinister Sunday writes Robert Craddock.

At first glance it appears the very bastion of dignity and decorum but the luscious Lord’s Long Room has never been quite what it seems.

It is also the place where rich men and cheap taunts can quietly coexist without scrutiny from a less privileged world.

Former Australian keeper Brad Haddin recalled on his Willow Talk podcast on Tuesday hearing the word “convict’’ uttered in his direction as he walked through the room on one Ashes tour.

Even the great opener Bill Brown, who toured England the year the iconic venue was opened in 1934, heard snide remarks as he walked through the members during his iconic 208 not out in 1938.

Usman Khawaja and Dave Warner in dispute with several MCC Members in the Long Room at Lords during the lunch break.

It didn’t stop him from loving the place because – from Father Time who stands on the top of the pavilion to the best player lunches in world cricket – most tourists have fond memories of the ground where cricket breathes.

The Long Room, however, had the most undignified day in its lengthy history when member’s jeered and abused Australian players as they left the field after the controversial stumping of Jonny Bairstow on the final day of the second Test on Sunday.

MCC Members in the famous eggs and bacon colours. Picture: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

For the first 211 years of its existence the MCC was a male only club before a vote in 1998 graciously decided that women other than Queen Elizabeth II would be permitted inside the Long Room and the club itself.

The Long Room is stocked with the mega-wealthy, generally private-school educated and most mostly elderly male members of the MCC who picked a bad day to have a bad day.

The Long Room uprising came just a week after the England Cricket Board released the independent Commission for Equity in Cricket report which followed a racism controversy in Yorkshire, venue of this week’s third Test.

The report, titled Holding a Mirror to Cricket, spotlighted a culture of “sexist, racist and other discriminatory practises and policies that lead to discriminatory outcomes across the game.’’

The sight of Pakistan born Usman Khawaja being sniped at by an elderly white male embodied so many of the Equity Report’s concerns about the stale, pale and elderly male themes of English cricket.

Usman Khawaja and Dave Warner in dispute with several MCC Members in the Long Room at Lords during the lunch break.

Because Lord’s is seen as the home of cricket officials are given the privilege of walking about 50 steps down a staircase through the members area past paintings of Don Bradman and Shane Warne and English legends such as WG Grace.

In bygone decades there never used to be a barrier between the players and members but in recent years that changed with roped off areas.

Security is less than it should be because there is a feeling that 80-year-old drinking gin and tonic are not likely to rain abuse down on players.

It has been mentioned in dispatches that Lord’s could be in danger of losing its Test if the members do not curb their behaviour but there is no danger of that.

As Bob Dylan once crooned, money doesn’t talk, it swears. The 12,000 MCC members who paid up to $80,000 to join the club include some of the most influential movers and shakers in Great Britain. There is a 29-year waiting list to join.

Players would never want the Lord’s Test to be scrapped – but the behaviour of MCC members on that sinister Sunday afternoon will never be forgotten.

Originally published as Crash: Lord’s Long Room uprising just the latest in history of cheap taunts aimed at visiting teams